“We Have Rearranged Your Local Grocery Store and We Don’t Give a Fuck What You Think About It,” by Laura Jackson Roberts

Welcome to your favorite chain grocery store! You may notice we’re in a bit of disarray this week. That’s because we’re implementing a fantastic new layout to improve your retail experience. And guess what? We don’t give a fuck what you think about it.

We already know you’ll be pissed. You’ll approach the customer service desk and bitch that you can’t find your Rice Krispies and the red wine has moved. Then you’ll demand to speak to the manager, and when she offers you a layout map, you’ll make a pff noise in her face and tell the person in line next to you that this place is going to hell and you should all go to that family-owned grocery store on the other side of town.

Well, you can suck it sideways. It’s our store and we can do whatever we want with it. Read our FAQs if you’ve got questions. Or don’t—we don’t give a shit. Either way, you need tangy barbeque sauce and tampons. We can wait you out, you whiny diaper-babies.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Why do you rearrange things so often?

It’s your own fault. You’re creatures of habit. Your unimaginative dinner menus and your ridiculous obsession with bok choy mean you never change your shopping patterns or try anything new. And somebody has to buy that fucking jar of Goober Grape that’s been sitting on the shelf since 2014. Yes, it’s smelly and weird looking. But so are a lot of your kids, and we tolerate them in our store. (Our corporate legal team said we have to.)

How often do you plan to rearrange the layout?

Whenever we damn well please. Maybe we’ll do it when we get bored. Maybe we’ll do it on Tuesdays when Mercury is in retrograde. Maybe we’ll start moving things to get you all anxious and then put things right back where they were. We don’t really know. Our moods change a lot.

Why did you put the sympathy cards beside the lunchmeat?

Look, we don’t come into your crappy basement apartment and ask you why you keep the olive oil beside the Stroopwafels. We suspect you’re into some freaky shit, but we don’t care enough to go any farther than that. Anyway, Aunt Mary’s dachshund kicked off and you’re low on pastrami. Normally we try to convenience you as little as possible, so take this gift and move along.

We also put the baby food next to the beer. You’re welcome.

I feel like a rat in a maze.

The cheese is now in aisle seven.

Can I just ask an employee for help?

Hah! That’s a good one. No, you probably cannot, because we’ve laid off 87% of our employees at this location. See that empty space up front where the bag boy used to stand? The one who was trying to save for Dartmouth? To be an engineer? He got the swift boot, and we’re installing a fourteenth row of our cost-saving, self-service registers.

And no, we don’t give a fuck what you think about that, either. Most of you have arms—bag your own groceries, assholes.

One of your employees told me your company is the worst place they’ve ever worked.

Oh, believe us, we know. As per our official corporate policy of not giving a fuck, we make it a point to fire employees the day after Christmas, to close nine out of ten registers on Memorial and Labor Day weekends and ask elderly cashiers to do their own bagging. The cashier with the seafood allergy actually believes we keep EpiPens in the office for her. It’s cute.

To be clear, we care even less about our employees than we do about you. Hell, sometimes, we rearrange the store to ruin your lives; sometimes, we do it to ruin theirs.

I swear to God, I will go to that family grocery store on the other side of town.

You mean that one in the weird shopping plaza full of potholes and Canada geese? The one that smells like your podiatrist’s office? Go ahead. You know they don’t carry organic. And where were they when you needed tahini? Those uncultured dipshits didn’t even know what it was. They thought you were saying tortellini.

But the Ma & Pa store’s bag boys carry my groceries to the car.

We bet they make their own coleslaw, too. Bless their hearts.

You’re a terrible, terrible company.

Yes. Yes we are. And you need almond milk. So we’ll see you bitches in the organic section. If you can find it.

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Laura Jackson Roberts is an environmental writer and humorist in West Virginia. Her humor has appeared in many places, including Brevity, Defenestration, the Erma Bombeck humor site, and the Museum of Americana. In her spare time, she lets her children run with scissors, hates earwigs, and has unusually small feet.